Monday, May 6, 2013

May 6

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So comforting to know this douche is a member of the House Committee on Science.

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This could be interesting: The authors examine U.S. public attitudes regarding global climate change, addressing the puzzle of why support for governmental action on this front is tepid relative to what existing theories predict. Introducing the theoretical concept of relative sociotropic time horizons, the authors show that believers in Christian end-times theology are less likely to support policies designed to curb global warming than are other Americans.

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"The Supreme Court will hand down its decision in June, and I cannot predict what the Court will do. The Court could uphold marriage as God defined it and as we have respected it since before the Pilgrims landed on the Atlantic coast centuries ago. Or the Court could redefine marriage, which would dramatically change hundreds of U.S. laws and the whole character of our society. There is now nothing you and I can do to affect the decision except to pray that God will speak to the Justices and tell them to do the right thing. The only thing you and I can do is to pray that five of the nine Justices will listen to hear and heed the Lord's message. So I'm asking you to pray every day for this cause because there's nothing else we can do." - Old harpy skank Phyllis Schlafly, sounding rather defeatist on her radio show.

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This has got to be a joke. James Carville and his suspicious head appeared on television today to build up Joseph McCarthy lookalike Sen. Ted Cruz to future legendary status, saying on ABC's This Week:

"I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I've seen in the last 30 years," Carville said. "I further think that he is going to run for president, and he is going to create something."

Wow. Define "fearless and talented" and "something."

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Remember the White Student Union that showed up at CPAC's 'Trump The Race Card' panel back in March? Well, they decided to show up to the May 1st rally for workers in D.C., and, according to reports, "bags of urine and flag poles were thrown" at the Youth NAZIs who turned out to show their opposition to actual workers in the name of white supremacy and corporate monarchy.

"We were here to protest communism and to stand up for the blue collar working class. And then I got urine thrown on me," White Student Union President Matthew Heimbach told CNN. "So it shows really how tolerant these people are."

That's right. We're intolerant of intolerance, so you get peed on.

Look at it this way, white supremacists. You're still #1 when it comes to excrement.

Now, it looks like we're headed for a real legislative confrontation. And man, is the finance sector freaking.

Last week, on April 24th, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Louisiana Republican David Vitter introduced legislation called the "Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act of 2013 Act," or the "Brown-Vitter TBTF Act" for short. The bill is a gun aimed directly at the head of the Too-Big-To-Fail beast.

If Matt Taibbi is excited about this it must be pretty big. In terms of banking regulations and actions, this Taibbi piece reads like a big old 1970′s bowl of Life cereal for Mikey. He likes it!

He goes on:

During the Dodd-Frank negotiations a few years ago, Brown teamed up with Delaware Democrat Ted Kaufman to introduce an amendment that would have physically capped the size of the biggest banks. The amendment was bold and righteous but was slaughtered on the floor by a 61-33 margin, undermined by leaders of both parties – 27 Democrats voted against it.

Brown-Vitter offers a different and, in a way, more elegant solution to the problem than Brown-Kaufman. Rather than impose size limits, it simply insists that banks with over $500 billion in assets maintain higher capital reserves than are currently required. Companies like J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America will have to keep capital reserves of about 15 percent, about twice the current amount.

The bill only has such tough requirements for just those few megabanks, which sounds unfair, except that the aim of the bill, precisely, is to level the playing field.

The Standard and Poor's ratings agency basically came out against the bill in a report they called, "Brown-Vitter Bill: Game-Changing Regulation For U.S. Banks" because it would, get this, cause harm to the banks' creditworthiness if the government wasn't there to prop them up, with the agency warning:

If congress enacts the bill as proposed, Standard and Poor's Ratings Services would have concerns about the economic impact on banks' creditworthiness stemming from the transition to substantially higher capital requirements.

So, ending Too Big Too Fail, according to Standard and Poor's, would force the agency to downgrade the U.S. banking system, making the U.S. banking system less competitive, and would likely destabilize the global financial market. These are the anointed gate keepers of capitalism talking.

It's funny how Capitalism works. Take away the government backing and it all falls down. That's some system you've got there, Moochers & Takers.

According to S&P, ending Too Big To Fail would put an end to the veneer of capitalism that the ratings agency has been playing along with since long before the house of cards collapsed, and we're supposed to continue to pretend that the financial sector isn't a quadrillion dollar bullshit con operation run by professional grifters and multinational pirates of the high seas.

The nerve of these degenerate gamblers and their accomplices. By all means, let's get government out of the lives of these proud people and their noble institution.

If your "way of life" involves handing deadly weapons to five-year olds, your way of life is completely screwed up and you should change it immediately because it is stupid and wrong. (And, again, also, too: goddammit, "learning to use and respect a gun" means at least knowing that the fking thing is loaded when it's sitting in the corner of the parlor like it's a damn umbrella stand or something, and we should talk about that part, too.) It is not in any way "normal" to hand a kindergartner a firearm. If a mother from the inner-city of, say, Philadelphia did that, and the kid subsequently shot his sister to death, Fox News never would stop yelling about the crisis in African American communities and the Culture Of Death, and rap music, too. If your culture is telling you that children who have only recently emerged from toddlerhood should have their own guns, then your culture is deadly and dangerous and that should concern you, too. If your culture demands that, in the face of a general national outrage over the killing of other children, your politics work to loosen the gun laws you have, as they apparently did in Kentucky, then your culture is making your politics stupid and wrong and you should change them, too. I do not have to understand these people any more, and it is way too early in the day to be drinking this much.

And while we're on the topic of guns, the criminally insane NRA have taken on a redneck from Alabama to be their new president. The clown's name is Jim Porter and he takes pride in referring to the Civil War as the "War of Northern Aggression". He also believes that Obama is a "fake president" whose "entire administration is anti-gun, anti-freedom, anti-Second Amendment."

Another sack of shit joins Wayne LaPierre on the NRA's board of sociopaths.

Well well well NRA, it looks like maybe you do not love the prologue to the Second Amendment (the "First" Amendment, whatever that might be) that much after all! That is because you shockingly asked Zombie Industries to remove its Zombie "Rockie" target from view at your big shindig over the weekend, the one we paid zero attention to at all. What's the matter, NRA? Can't stand a little zombie free speech about the Right … TO DIE??? READ MORE »

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Wisconsin Considers Forbidding Poors From Buying Cheese

Hey, which state hates Poors the most? If you guessed Florida, we'd understand your instincts, but you'd be wrong (today anyway) because Wisconsin is going to prohibit Poors from buying several types of cheese. Yes, cheese. Not "cheez" or "cheez füd" but "cheese," as in Swiss, Cheddar, and low sodium. (No word yet on cedar cheese or those cakes we like.) From NBC15:

MADISON-Members of the state affairs committee are approving a bill that limits the amount of junk food that can be purchased with food stamp benefits…Under the bill, participants in the program must spend two-thirds of their monthly benefits on certain approved foods, including proteins and produce. The remaining one-third can be used for any authorized food.

The bill's author says he's trying to encourage healthier eating, but at least one opponent says it could hurt a major piece of the state's economy: the dairy industry. "This bill does not allow for Wisconsinites who are utilizing the FoodShare program to purchase sharp cheddar cheese, Swiss cheese, shredded cheese or reduced sodium cheeses," said State Rep. JoCasta Zamarripa, D-Milwaukee.

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Republican Rep. Dean Kaufert, of Neenah, has amended his original bill to require people [on] food stamps, to spend at least two-thirds of their monthly benefits on items such as milk, bread and vegetables. Kaufert says he wants people to eat healthier…

Oh yes, we are well aware of how much the GOP valueshealthy eating and government initiatives that encourage people to make healthy choices. We are also well aware of Scott Walker's interest in being a dick for no real reason, so we imagine that this bill will be signed into law any day now.